You can tell how hard their life was by the state of the cabin and the look on my grandfather’s face. Not one person in the picture was smiling, least of all my great-grandfather Isaac Gulley, a railroad worker with a bushy beard. He once snapped the neck of my grandmother’s beloved pet kitten after it got into their bucket of milk. They were so poor there wasn’t anything that could be spared, not even for a kitten. She remembered that every day for the rest of her life because she loved that kitten so much and even taught it tricks, including how to push a doll’s buggy.
